A transport control protocol (TCP) is used extensively by many of the network communication applications including, for example, the World Wide Web (WWW), e-mail, file transfer protocol (FTP), streaming media applications, and the like. The TCP is a reliable stream delivery service that guarantees to deliver a stream of data sent from one host to another without duplication or losing data. The TCP implements a positive acknowledgment technique that includes retransmission of packets to guarantee reliability of packet transfers. This technique requires the receiver to respond with an acknowledgment message as it receives the packet, when such message is not received within a predefine time window, the sender retransmits the packet. As the TCP is optimized for accurate delivery, the protocol sometimes incurs relatively long delays and extensive bandwidth usage. Therefore, the TCP is not particularly suitable for applications where real-time delivery is needed.
A user datagram protocol (UDP) is usually utilized in applications require timely delivery. The UDP does not guarantee reliability or ordering of packets, thus packets (or datagrams) may arrive out of order, appear duplicated, or go missing without notice. The UDP is faster and less bandwidth consuming than the TCP as the overhead of checking when every packet actually arrives is eliminated.
In the related art network devices (e.g., gateways, switches, routers, etc.) implementing network communication using either a UDP or a TCP, cannot provide efficient mechanisms to support communication over special-purpose time-critical and mission-critical networks where both timely and guaranteed delivery are essential. Typically, such networks are utilized in military applications, communication between ground and aerial devices, and so on.
An example for a time-critical and mission-critical network is an IP military network that requires more complex architecture than a civilian IP network. At least the following factors contribute to this complexity: unstable end-to-end connectivity between a source device and a destination device in such a network: a limited bandwidth allowance per source and/or destination, a strict prioritization requirements, real-time requirements, and traffic and protocols restrictions because of special military network devices (e.g., gateways, encoders, firewalls, etc.).
Furthermore, such networks demand to support non-compromised requirements, such as bandwidth management over limited bandwidth, quality of service per every packet, no latency, transparency, and so on.
It would be therefore advantageous to provide a network device that can support the requirements of special-purpose data networks while being fully compliant standard network protocols and devices and fully transparent to other network entities.